Speaking and Communicating Podcast

are doing a presentation and all of a sudden they start sweating and they're 12 years old and people start laughing in the classroom. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode...
00:29
please log on to iTunes and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating.
00:44
My guest today, Brooke Bralove, who is a psychotherapist, licensed clinical social worker, and advanced accelerated resolution therapy practitioner is here to talk to us not only about how we can overcome so many of the traumas and other mental health issues, but how, if you want to be a better public speaker and presenter, you can find the root cause and what you can do about it.
01:14
And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi Brooke. Hello, Roberta. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. And when the US are you? So I live in Bethesda, Maryland, which is right outside Washington, DC. I was born and raised in Bethesda and went to high school in DC. And I live about two miles from where I grew up.
01:44
This is very much home. How did you get into this? If you can give us a bit of your background. I have an MSW, Master's Degree in Social Work from Columbia University. When I first graduated, I worked at a domestic violence support center, really doing trauma work with children and women who've been impacted by domestic violence. So I've always had a trauma background.
02:10
I then have been in private practice for 20 years. So trauma shows up all the time. And of course, there are different ways of talking about trauma. There's what we call big T trauma, which is the trauma you really know and think about, combat, natural disasters, school shootings, abuse, violence, things like that. But all of us have these little T traumas.
02:39
which are basically traumatic, which simply means we find it overwhelming. That is really all trauma is, is when we are really unable to cope with something because we find it overwhelming. So there might be a little t-trauma for someone and someone else, that's a regular Thursday. So I think it's important to understand that I really believe that trauma impacts all of us, just differently and on different scales for sure.
03:09
So trauma has always been a part of my practice, even if I didn't know I was really specializing in it. And I actually had my own experience, which I had a really bad breakup in 2017, and it just floored me. My regular therapy wasn't cutting it, I tried some yoga therapy, and I just couldn't kind of move on. And one person,
03:36
told me about this thing I'd never heard of, which is called accelerated resolution therapy or ART. I tried it. I had two sessions of ART and I was able to move forward in a way that I just had not been at all. And I said, this is amazing. I want to be trained in this immediately. And I was trained in 2018 and I've been providing ART for patients for the last five years.
04:05
and it's become a huge part of my practice. It's really become the center of my heart, my passion and what I truly, truly believe will liberate people and free them from decades of trauma, unhappiness, depression, anxiety, all sorts of things. The little T trauma, while you were describing that, I thought to myself, how many times have we heard
04:35
This generation has such snowflakes, they can't cope with anything. We have worse. Is this a lack of understanding on our part? I think it's a great question. And what I find in mental health and in lots of things, these buzzwords go around. And when buzzwords go around, people get tired of them. There was this whole idea of ADHD. Every kid is being diagnosed with ADHD.
05:03
that happened for a long time, right? We're over medicating. I don't know that that ended up being particularly true. I think there's times that kids are over medicated and times that kids are completely under medicated and don't get the help they need. I think that what happens really is that we try to compare suffering. What we say is, well, my little
05:32
get over it and stop being a snowflake. But I don't believe in that. I believe that every parent does the best they can, except for maybe sociopaths, psychopaths, and personality disordered parents. But really, if we give people the benefit of the doubt, most people love their children and try to do right by them. But things happen. Needs do not get met.
05:55
It is literally impossible for a parent to meet each child's every need. In fact, we wouldn't really want that because that's not real life. What's more important to look at is what was the relationship with your parents? How did you feel about yourself? What was the messaging you got when you were sad? Were you told to suck it up? Boys don't cry. Or were you held and told?
06:24
It's okay. I see you. You're having a hard time and I'm with you. These are very different reactions and they mold very different kinds of children. And also with the comparison, you know, the third option could have been your parents saying, which I've heard, by the way, I'm South African. When I came to America, they say, you know what, when I was growing up, if I didn't want to finish my food, my parents would say, I'm going to send you to Africa so you can see how hungry the kids are. So that you feel guilty.
06:53
If you are listening, you think that's no big deal. You had food in a big house of motor you went from life, but that's a trauma to them. The fact that they were unheard and were forced to shove down food when they felt full. Yeah, and I think what you're bringing up is shame, right? So I'm also certified in Brene Brown's Daring Greatly curriculum, which is really a shame resilience curriculum. Every human being has shame and every human being needs to look at it.
07:23
Because if you don't know shame, it drives you unconsciously. If you really take that example, if that happened repeatedly, you may actually have someone who either cannot read their own bodily cues. So for instance, you may have sort of paved the way for some type of disordered eating. I can't.
07:48
attention to my body because there are have to's surrounding food and we do not want to teach our children that they should not tune into their bodies. The body doesn't lie. We know this. The body keeps the score. So you do not want to be teaching children to override what their bodies are telling them, especially when you're talking about fullness or body
08:17
gut feelings, right? We don't want to tell little girls, oh, you get a bad feeling about that strange man who's talking to you. Just ignore that and be nice. We want to teach them that their body knows and to trust that. I constantly talk to my children about, I don't care ever if you're nice. If your body tells you something is off, you leave.
08:45
You tell someone, you get out of the situation. So literally you are looking at how that kind of pattern develops with a simple comment of, you have to finish everything on your plate because there are starving kids in Africa, which is its own host of wrong, right? I know. That point of children listening to their bodies, because how many molestation cases have you heard where
09:13
They say, but the uncle is nice. What is your problem? But whatever they judge the kid on. And that develops into a grownup who might potentially be a victim of daydream because they didn't listen when their instincts and their gut said, get out of this apartment before anything happens. Yeah, and I mean, unfortunately the statistics are really pretty upsetting around this. We do find that people who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault,
09:42
will often have repeated experiences where they are victimized in one way or another. You know, we often tend to, again, blame victims for that. But this is where we need to understand how the brain works. The brain will always go toward what is familiar. That is what we do as human beings. And in fact, if they were to be in a safer situation, in a relationship with a safer individual,
10:11
they might actually find that boring because their brain says, this is weird. We're used to drama and ups and downs and a roller coaster. So it's so important to be respectful of what our brains do. It's not that these individuals are stupid or anything. Their brains are used to these neuro pathways are developed and it takes a lot of effort to change them.
10:40
You can change them, but it does take time and effort. Now you said with Brene Brown's curriculum, would you like to explain that to us a bit more? Because we only know her as the queen of vulnerability and that's it. She's the queen of a lot of things actually, but absolutely vulnerability is the main thing. I was one of the first four people in the DMV to be trained in Brene's work back in 2013.
11:09
I think it's exactly 20 weekend workshops for women that are two and a half days of very intense process in which we really take a deep dive into vulnerability, shame, perfectionism, empathy, trust, self-compassion. And really we answer the question, where in your life do you want to show up, be seen and live brave?
11:39
is in the way of that. And it's a beautiful, beautiful two and a half days. I usually tell people I end up having goosebumps a lot of the weekend because I'm watching people talk about things that they've never shared with anyone sometimes. And this is a roomful of strangers, but it's actually kind of neat to see that when you don't know that you ever have to see the people again.
12:04
people actually are more willing to be vulnerable and vulnerability begets vulnerability. So when I see the woman next to me saying something really difficult, I have permission to do that myself. And they're just really, really wonderful things, weekends, tools, exercises to explore what's standing in your way and how do you wanna show up differently in the world for yourself?
12:34
group therapy work, I thought to myself, do people really share their innermost farmers and experiences in front of others? Because, you know, a therapist's couch is quite safe. Only you and the therapist, and they are so into secrecy and confidentiality, no one will ever know your business. But it's so touching for you to say that, actually, that's what makes others also start to share. Yeah, I mean, it's contagious, literally. That one of the things that
13:03
I love about vulnerability. It's sort of a paradox, but it's basically this idea that vulnerability is the first thing we look for in other people, and it is the last thing we want to show in ourselves. And so when people are talking about, you know, I don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to talk or say hard things, I say, how did you feel after so-and-so just shared? And they say, oh, I felt immediately closer to her.
13:30
and I wanted her to continue. And I said, then she says the same thing about you. She's thinking and feeling the exact same thing, which is I want to know more and now I feel connected. There is no connection without vulnerability, none. And why do we think that we shouldn't share, but others sharing really connects us to them and we want them to just continue? Because we are kind of sitting in our own shame.
14:00
If I say this, people will judge me, they'll hate me, they'll reject me, they'll think I'm an imposter. All these things. Really, I think it just adds layers and more context, depth, I would say, to a human being to hear their story. We rarely think, oh, that's a bad person because we've heard about one mistake they've made or one trauma.
14:28
Most of us can think beyond that kind of thing. Every time I do my weekends, most people say they grew up in a home where they either didn't have any idea what vulnerability was, or they were told over and over again that it's weakness. Vulnerability is actually our most accurate measure of courage. There is nothing more courageous than asking for a raise.
14:56
proposing to someone, sharing something that is a hard truth for you, telling someone they've hurt you. There's nothing more courageous than that. And when you hear those stories, have you noticed any patterns in their personal relationships? Oh, absolutely. I mean, they either maintain a real
15:20
distance and they then feel disconnected from other people most of the time. They put on armor. I mean, all of us put on armor to go out in the world, but people who were taught that vulnerability is bad, they armor up a lot. They're people pleasers. They are always doing things for others. They use all sorts of ways to defend against vulnerability.
15:50
And I see a lot of these women in my practice. So they're just so outwardly focused. So they're always trying to do things for their children or do things for their family members and friends, but they rarely will accept help themselves. And what I love what Brene says is we actually know that nothing builds trust more than vulnerability. Why is that? Because when I say to you, I need help.
16:19
Can you help me? What I've just done is I've made the other person know that they too can ask for help, that I am trusting also because I'm so trusting of them that I'm willing to be vulnerable. And then they are more likely to trust me and be vulnerable. Mutual vulnerability goes a long way. Yes.
16:43
Now we talk a lot about communication skills and public speaking and presenting at work, basically. And a lot of people, their biggest fear is, I'm going to be judged. But you're brilliant at what you do. Yes, but I want to sit in my cubicle and do it quietly. I want to make a mistake. It's such an exposure, feeling naked kind of moment when they're on stage in front of everybody. Would you like to share your thoughts on that?
17:12
Yeah, absolutely. That is hugely vulnerable for a lot of people. I think what's important to look out there is where did that come from? And often, just like you talked about earlier with the comment about the eating, a lot of times people receive messages about their communication styles. Speak up. I can't hear you. You're mumbling.
17:39
You're not making any sense. And again, not just in the home, but it's school, right? People have experiences, you know, they are doing a presentation and all of a sudden they start sweating and they're 12 years old and people start laughing in the classroom. It's I think early experiences that shape that fear of public speaking or being front and center or taking up space. I mean, even that.
18:08
A lot of us are told that we are too much, we take up too much space, a lot of women specifically, and so we try to get small and hide out. Well, you're not hiding out when you're talking to a room full of however many people. You're it, you're on. And if we have those ideas that we don't communicate well or no one can follow our train of thought. I mean, people with ADHD have been receiving negative messages about their brains.
18:38
probably their whole lifetime. And so how are those people going to enter into presentations? Are they gonna take lots of risks? Are they gonna show up really confident? Probably not. So everything is tied to the messaging you received in your childhood. Yeah, I mean, I just did a reel for social media the other day and I basically, it was pretty short. I said, spoiler alert about therapy. It's about your childhood.
19:07
It's really as simple as that. And so I always chuckle to myself when someone comes into therapy and at the first session they say, I don't wanna talk about my childhood. And that happens a lot. And I usually nod and say, yeah, I can understand that. What you're telling me is you really wanna focus on what's going on presently. But I will tell you that my guess is we are going to need to go back before we go forward.
19:34
I look at therapy as this sort of bow and arrow analogy, which is in order to propel forward, we have to go back. And there's a lot of tension there and it's tough and it's harder to do. And that will give us the energy to move ahead. And when they say that, is there a shame associated with the childhood? That's why they don't even wanna go back? I think it depends.
20:01
Sometimes it's shame. Sometimes they have a belief. A lot of people will come to me and they say, you know, I've had a lot of therapy. I've been in and out of therapy my whole life. So I've dealt with that. They basically think, well, I've talked about that. And so it is done. Check mom, check alcoholic father. Check, check. And then it's done. And that's just not how we work. And that's why I am not a fan of things, language around getting
20:31
over something. I actually don't believe that. I believe we get through things and we learn to live with them. I don't know what over looks like. That just doesn't ring true and then I think we then feel guilty like why can't I get over this? It always feels a little bit like blaming. Earlier when you spoke about your breakup I wanted to ask you are such an expert in what you do.
20:56
And sometimes the rest of us outside looking in may feel like, Brooke, she started this for years. If she has a trauma, a breakup, she'll get over it because she knows how to fix herself basically. Yeah. Look, we're human beings. I'm a human being. And I don't hide that. I mean, I know obviously people can tell I'm a human being, but I, but what I really mean is, you know, I don't subscribe to this sort of.
21:23
blank slate therapist. I was trained a little bit more in that way. And I have just moved away from that. We want to be seen and validated. And that is why a lot of people are looking for more of a mirror. Yeah, I get that, you know, and sort of knowing not, oh, yep, I understand how hard it is to get the kids out of the house every morning and how you have to say 18 times, put on your shoes.
21:53
I get that. So I can be in it with you. So I really don't hide a lot. I'm obviously quite judicial about what I do share. But I don't think people want to see a holier than now person in the room with them. They want to know that I also struggle because then it gives them permission and more self-compassion to struggle and be okay with it. And that's really what we're trying to do.
22:22
And then this is also something we do in Daring Greatly, which is you can't get close to perfect. There's not a lot of intimacy with people who are true perfectionists because they won't leave that space because you're never going to know them. And so if we want to be known, we need to be seen as imperfect because we are period. There's no such thing as perfect. It's never existed and it never will.
22:50
It's the same thing we say when people are being trained to speak. You cannot relate to someone who's a perfect speaker, polished the speech. There's no mistake. I mean, how many times have I started since we started, if somebody is too polished, it looks unreachable. I could never be like that. And so let me not even try. And it doesn't feel genuine. That's the thing is perfectionism doesn't feel real because it's not.
23:19
It's non-existent. The people I see for regular talk therapy, I would honestly say eight out of 10 of them are dealing with perfectionism, especially in this area. It's very well-educated, very wealthy, and there's a lot of keeping up with the Joneses, and that gets in the way of actually listening in here to what matters, what's important to me.
23:49
What's usually the root cause for why they feel the need to be that way? Well, you can answer your own question, right? Childhood. I would say one of the most painful things for me to listen to as a therapist is when people talk about how they would come home and feel amazing about a science test and they got a 99 and the first thing their mother or father says is, where's the other point?
24:18
No, they did not. Oh, it happens actually all the time. It's so shocking to me because I had really, really imperfect but wonderful parents who just wanted me to focus on effort. And so that would never have happened in my household. But that sends a message to that kid that there is zero room, there's not one percent room for them to make a mistake. They basically internalize that.
24:47
And then you've got a lifetime of that. And those are the expectations they may put on others as they grow up and interact with other people. And that's a really good point. We actually leave that part out a lot. We think, oh, it's so terrible, you know, pour them, et cetera. But I think you're absolutely right, is if you're a perfectionist, you are much more likely than to expect your partner to be a perfectionist, much more likely to be incredibly critical and judgmental.
25:17
So again, that just causes even more disconnection. Bro, please talk to us about art, accelerated resolution therapy. My favorite topic right now, I would love to. So accelerated resolution therapy or art is a treatment modality that uses rapid eye movement and voluntary image replacement to change the way the brain stores
25:45
traumatic images and sensations. What that means is it's not talk therapy. It's very brief in only one to five sessions. People can heal from really almost any issue that would kind of normally bring you into therapy. It's specifically wonderful and most transformative for trauma, PTSD, but it also works for depression, anxiety,
26:14
relationship issues, grief, addiction, chronic pain, chronic illness, eating disorders. I mean, the list is almost endless and it's the most exciting thing I've ever done in my career. I believe wholeheartedly that this treatment and the future of mental health is going to be less
26:44
and changing the brain. And that is what I think are gonna find is most healing for people. What I call, it's the less known cousin of EMDR. And so many people have heard of eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing. There's a lot more research on EMDR, but art actually started when a woman named Lainey Rosenzweig, who's a brilliant therapist, went to...
27:11
an EMDR training and decided that she thought she could tweak it to make it a little bit better and art was born in 2008. There are about 6,000 practitioners in the US and Canada now. So it's not huge, but it is spreading. There are no words for what I see in my office in 60 minutes. Literally no words. That's why I have a lot of testimonials on my website. Because
27:40
The only people who can really talk about it is people who've sat in my office and experienced the true magic of art. And it is magic. Multiple people use that word and are pretty incredulous of how did that work? Where did that sensation go? Where is that image? I can't see it anymore. Things like that.
28:05
It might be controversial if I say, so anybody listening who's been going to therapy for 10 years, if they switched to an art session, then that could maybe yield faster results? I wouldn't really say it like that. Here's what I say. I love talk therapy.
28:27
I think it is extremely important. I think people want to be seen and heard. So it's not that I think talk therapy is going to die out or that it's not useful. I will always do talk therapy. But I think when there are places that you continue to be stuck, like every single time my father calls me, I have a panic attack.
28:51
And I've talked about it and talked about it and talked about it for 10 years. I understand the why, I understand, I've tried different coping mechanisms or breathing techniques, things like that, and I'm still not getting better. That would be something to try art. And what I love about art is that I can say to a therapist, they'll call me and say, I've got this patient who's really stuck around this one incident that happened and she just can't get over it. And I'll say, send her to me.
29:20
I won't need to see her for more than one to five sessions and she just continues on with you. So I don't need to poach anyone, I just borrow them. And if it works, amazing. I will never say that art works for all people because that's simply impossible because we're so unique. But it does work. The research shows that it's 70% effective. The percentage in my practice, I would say it's much closer to 90%.
29:49
for relief and I can tell because they don't need to come back. What I would say is it's not a replacement, but if there are specific areas specifically about trauma, I've worked with people involved in a school shooting, unfortunately, and those images, the startle reflex with loud noises, fireworks, those things don't usually go away with talking. That is a great example where
30:18
They can find an art practitioner and they will in their mind think about the scene of the shooting. They don't actually need to talk about it at all. And while they're thinking about it, they do series of rapid eye movements that will create negative sensations in the body. If you're thinking about the school shooting you were involved in, you're going to have.
30:46
tightness in your chest or a lump in your throat or nauseated. And the eye movements calm those sensations down. And then we replace those negative images with positive images, the way you wish it had happened. So it could be that that was a regular day or it was the best day ever at school or.
31:10
The shooting started and immediately the police came and stopped it and no one was hurt and nothing bad happened. So we say keep the knowledge, lose the pain. You will never forget the facts of what happened to you. We would never want that. It is not hypnosis. You are in full control of every session. But we want to lose the images and the negative sensations that come up around this incident.
31:38
And in one to five sessions, we can do that. Keep the knowledge. Lose the pain. But this is the way I talk about it. Let's use public speaking. So what will happen is I had a woman recently who began to have panic attacks when she was doing presentations. And of course, once that starts, you then worry about having the panic attack. And so that creates, often, the panic attack, right? Mm-hmm.
32:07
We had her think about that last experience where she had the panic attack. And of course, while she's doing eye movements, she's feeling like her chest is going to explode. Her throat is constricted. And with the eye movements, we get those sensations to actually just leave or get a lot less. There are more steps to it, but eventually she imagined herself killing it.
32:36
just killing it in this presentation. She imagines people giving a standing ovation. She imagines that everyone in the room says you deserve a promotion, so she gets a promotion. And then she goes out and has a wonderful celebration with those people. She stores that in the brain. So she doesn't have access to the other images and can't find the sensations anymore in her body.
33:05
So we will literally erase those pictures that were traumatic from that experience. And so what I say is, if that memory used to be right here for her and feel so close and triggering and upsetting, what I say is, it's now in the corner of the room over there. I can tell you about it, but I have no
33:32
connection, emotional disturbance or connection to it. And literally sometimes I cannot see it at all anymore. And that's when people will be completely shocked. They'll say, why can't I see it anymore? And I just say, because you're healing yourself right now.
33:57
Keep the knowledge, lose the pain. Words of wisdom from Brooke Bralove, the psychotherapist, licensed clinical social worker, advanced accelerated resolution therapy practitioner. Brooke, thank you so much for being on our show, for sharing your expertise with us. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And before you go, please tell us where we can find more of you on the internet.
34:25
Sure. So my website is www.brookbralove.com. I'm also on Instagram at Brooke Bralove psychotherapy. You can find me on TikTok, Facebook. Yeah, it was really a pleasure to chat with you today. I really enjoyed our conversation. And there's so much that we learned and we know more modalities today on how to fill ourselves. So thank you so much.
34:52
Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review on iTunes and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.